Free Stones: Experiment (Stones #3) by Jacob Whaler

right.”
    “Do you really think Ryzaard will
ever
be gone?”
    “All I can do is hope. And not think too far ahead. Right now, we just have to be grateful Ryzaard didn’t kill your whole family. If your mom and dad knew you were alive, Ryzaard would—”
    “Don’t say it.” Jessica puts a finger on Matt’s lips. “Just promise me one thing. Don’t ever go there again.”
    “All right.” Matt takes Jessica’s hand and starts walking to the house, stepping onto the perfectly manicured lawn. “Come on. I want you to see the inside of the house.”
    She stops and pulls back. “Matt, wait.” She turns him and stares into his face again. Her eyes move back and forth like she’s reading words etched in the depths of his mind. “You’ve been jumping back and forth to Earth. You went to my house. You went to Ryzaard’s office. Did you go anywhere else?”
    Matt lets his eyes float up to the open blue sky above the clearing. It’s a beautiful day. No time for arguments. Especially with Jessica. He tries to smile at her with a look on his face that says:
Who? Me?
    “You’ve always been a terrible liar,” she says. “Now tell me the truth.” Her fingers curl into his shirt again, and she pulls him close to her face. “Where have you gone? I need to know.”
    Her eyes grow wide. Somehow, she sees the truth in the smile he’s trying to suppress.
    “Your own house?” Jessica’s face goes pale. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”



CHAPTER 11
    “T he stars are all different from before, back when we lived in the
favela
.” Yarah looks up and arches her neck back, pointing her eyes into the darkness above. “I can’t ever find
Grande Ursa
.”
    “The Big Dipper? It’s not up there anymore.” Leo smiles at the way Yarah mixes English and Portuguese without thinking. She hasn’t done it for a long time, but the absence of Matt and Jessica has brought it back. Even now, when he speaks to her in Portuguese, she looks at him in a funny way and always answers in English.
    She turns her big eyes to face him. “Where did it go?”
    Leo pulls up the blanket, the thick grass of the riverbank underneath. Since Matt and Jessica left, Leo and Yarah have been sleeping out every night. The castle is too big and empty with just the two of them.
    “We’re in a different part of the sky now, maybe a different galaxy.” Leo looks up at the points of light burning in the dome of night like pinpricks in the fabric of space. “We might even be on the other side of the universe, or a completely different universe.”
    “But we always used to see it on summer nights back home.” Yarah yawns. “I miss the night sky back home. I miss Mommy and Daddy.”
    “You mean Matt and Jessica?”
    “They’re my mommy and daddy now.” Yarah turns in her blankets again. “How much longer do we have to wait? Hasn’t it already been a month?”
    Yarah’s tiny hand touches his shoulder.
    “Only three days,” he says. “Still almost a whole month to go. The time will go fast. We’ll keep having fun every day. I’m sure they’ll be back soon.”
    Yarah giggles. “When Mommy comes back, I’m going to run to her and give the biggest hug in the whole world.”
    A shooting star blazes across the sky. They both watch it in the silence of the singing frogs.
    “Yarah?” Leo stretches his hands back and puts them under his head. “How did you make this world? Wouldn’t it be cool if I could make one too? Then we could go back and forth and have a
huge
game of hide-and-seek.”
    Yarah bolts upright. “I
love
hide-and-seek! Let’s do it.”
    “But first, you need to show me how to make a world,” Leo says. “Can you do that?”
    Leo stares up at Yarah, and she looks back at him. Her eyes float up to the sky, sweeping back and forth across it.
    “Well?” Leo says.
    “It’s hard to remember.” Yarah’s large eyes roll from one side to another. “It was so long ago. I was just a little girl.”
    Leo chuckles.